Executive Editor’s Note: In previous installments, this series traced Europe’s missionary legacy, its spiritual decline, and the need to rethink strategic missions. In this fourth article, Derrick Bremer focuses on France as a case study in global influence and gospel need.
Walk into almost any major city in the world, and you’ll see the reflections of France. Its art, language, and values have shaped global culture for centuries. From the philosophies of Paris cafés to the fashions of the runways and the songs that fill coffee shops everywhere, France exports ideas the way other nations export goods.
For generations, Christian missionaries carried the gospel from Europe. Today, that same continent (and France in particular) has become a crucial field for the gospel, precisely because of that influence. What happens in France rarely stays in France. When the French world adopts an idea, it often becomes global.
But beneath that cultural glow, a nation that has largely closed its doors to organized religion exists. Less than 3% of the French population regularly attends any church, and fewer than 1% attend an evangelical church. Many have never personally met an evangelical believer. The country that once had communities selling themselves into slavery to reach the Caribbean with the gospel now needs missionaries on its own streets.
The Faith That Shaped France
Christianity arrived early in France. The gospel reached the Roman province of Gaul by the second century. Monks and missionaries crisscrossed its rivers and mountains for a thousand years. When cathedrals were built along the Seine and the Loire, they symbolized a people united under Christ.
During the Reformation, that unity was shattered. The French Protestants (known as the Huguenots) embraced Scripture as final authority, but persecution drove many into exile. Some fled to England, South Africa, and the American colonies, while others perished. The edict that ended tolerance in 1685 drained the nation of thousands of skilled workers, thinkers, and believers. France’s loss became the world’s gain.
By the time the Enlightenment arrived, a deep skepticism toward all religious authority had already taken root. Philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau proposed freedom apart from faith, and reason apart from revelation. That outlook hardened during the French Revolution, which enthroned “reason” as a goddess and, in a symbolic act, stripped many churches of their crosses.
France never fully replaced what it removed. Instead, it enshrined laïcité, a strict form of secularism, as national identity. To most French citizens, faith is private, and religion is assumed to be divisive. Ask a Parisian about church, and you’ll often hear some version of “I believe in something, but not religion.”
A Spiritual Desert in Bloom
That secular soil is hard. Across the last two decades, France has quietly become one of Europe’s most dynamic and under-reported mission fields. Immigrant congregations from West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America are growing in the outskirts of France. Church plants are emerging in provincial towns. In some regions, evangelical believers have doubled in number within a generation. Yes, they’re still small — but they are undeniably alive.
The challenge is enormous. Many French people carry historic suspicion toward the clergy, while others have simply never been invited to consider Christ personally. Missionaries in France describe their work not as mass crusades but as long conversations. The work is patient sowing through friendship, hospitality, and the discovery of Scripture.
Evangelism here often looks like walking with one person for a long time — a shared meal, a Bible discussion, an invitation to belong — before belief. The soil resists quick results. But I believe every genuine relationship can become holy ground.
Why France Matters for the World
Every soul matters and is worthy of our efforts to reach the world. Reaching France, though, means reaching the networks that radiate from France to the world.
In Paris, there are 180 different nationalities. It’s a crossroads for Francophone Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Students, business leaders, and artists pass through French institutions before shaping policies and cultures elsewhere. When the gospel gains ground in France, it can echo throughout the entire French-speaking world.
Consider this ripple effect — a Congolese student hears the gospel in Lyon, is discipled, and returns home to plant a church in Kinshasa; a French believer mentors a North African immigrant who later launches a ministry among his own people. Every redeemed heart in France carries the potential to influence continents.
To invest in France is to invest in the world. And that makes this mission field uniquely strategic.
Mission Presence
French culture prizes authenticity. Flashy religion, quick conversions, and moral grandstanding usually backfire. Missionaries must show the sincerity of Christ’s love through consistent friendship and competence in daily work. One veteran church planter said, “In France, evangelism starts with credibility.” People first need to see that the Christian faith produces good neighbors before they believe it produces good news.
That reality might frustrate those who measure ministry in speed. But it should also remind us that missions have never depended on efficiency. The work we’re called to depends on endurance. Seeds planted in patience eventually bear fruit.
Facing the Challenge
France’s idols differ from those Carey confronted in India, but they are just as binding. Beautiful lies, polished, polite, and persuasive, corrode truth.
Missionaries in France are quietly challenging a national narrative that says humanity can flourish without Christ. And every time a French believer confesses faith publicly, it rattles the assumption that Christianity no longer belongs in European life.
Hope Rising
There is a generation of young French Christians who love their country deeply and believe the gospel can renew it. Their churches may meet in school gyms, storefronts, or rented theatres, but they are joyfully alive. Worship services blend African rhythms, French hymns, and global praise songs. In these places, we see a wonderful living testimony that Christ’s kingdom blesses the whole world.
Partnerships between local believers and international missionaries are forming new networks of training and church planting. Scripture is being translated again into everyday French. The Spirit who once sent missionaries from France is now sending missionaries to France. And I believe, He will soon send renewed French believers back out again.
Why We Go
For those of us preparing to serve in France, we go because we believe France still shapes ideas that shape the world. We go because people there are as lost as anywhere else and just as loved by God. We go because every heart and every nation matters to the Savior who died for all. We go out of obedience to Christ’s call.
France reminds us that influence without truth leads to emptiness. No civilization, however refined, can outgrow its need for redemption.
